Inequitable resources

Jan. 11, 2008

Michael Rebell, the lead lawyer who successfully sued the state to boost education funding in New York City, is on the faculty at Columbia University's Teachers College in Manhattan. / Angela Gaul/The Journal News

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A Journal News editorial

Today, the second day of the special series, "Our Schools, Our Money,'' explores the inequities among school districts in the Lower Hudson Valley: inequities in funding, resources, teacher quality and experience, and, of course, academic success rates. The articles help crystallize disparities that have long been apparent to families relegated to underperforming schools in disadvantaged communities.

There aren't supposed to be any inequities.

New York's constitution guarantees all children residing in the state access to a sound education, regardless of their circumstances: whether they are poor or rich or somewhere in between; whether they speak and understand English well, or not; whether they are "general'' students or students with physical or psychological disabilities.

Their education is the responsibility of the school districts in which they live. Under the law, that education is grounded in state learning standards that apply to all New York students, kindergartners to 12th-graders. Curriculums are left to local districts, but they must be designed to meet those standards. Students at risk of not meeting them must be identified as early as possible and given extra academic services. One way to measure whether individual students, their teachers and their school districts are meeting or exceeding the standards is through statewide, standardized testing. To hold all those involved accountable, data about performance on those tests, among much other district information, are widely publicized and scrutinized.

The end result should be students across the state being handed high school diplomas that signify their readiness for further education, for employment, for life. Theoretically, a New York diploma means the same in Buffalo as it does in Brooklyn; the same in Yorktown as it does in Yonkers; the same for a gifted teen as for an autistic child; the same for a white child from Scarsdale, for an African-American child from East Ramapo, for an Hispanic child from Port Chester. The reality, however, is much different.

Paying for schools

The money for schools is supposed to come from a fair equation worked out between the state and federal governments, and local school districts. The latter's share is supposed to be based on their ability to pay given their wealth as measured in property values. The equation should be relatively simple. It has been anything but.

The federal government, for example, has never fully funded the services that federal law insists children with disabilities are entitled to. New York state aid became a twisted, politicized formula that, despite reforms last year, remains inequitable. As today's stories well show, cities, with their higher share of needy children, are still shortchanged. And they underperform.

"Our kids have been shortchanged for decades under the state-aid formula," said Robert E. Biggerstaff, executive director and general counsel of the New York State Association of Small City School Districts. "State aid is not keeping up with the needs these poor districts have."

When children leave their families and homes each day, be they wealthy, low-income or somewhere in the vast middle, they are supposed to be treated to the same thing -a sound education. The reality is, the greater the needs of students or the lower the wealth of a district, poor academic results usually follow. As staff writer Dwight R. Worley reported: Wealthier districts succeed because of who is not living in the communities they serve: poor students, non-English-speaking students, students with disabilities.

"We need more resources than (wealthier districts) do," said Tony Sawyer, Mount Vernon's new superintendent. "People are not willing to redistribute money to those in need."

Still, a catch

Michael Rebell knows. For almost 20 years, he fought on behalf of New York City schoolchildren whose classrooms were jammed, whose schools were crumbling, whose teachers were usually poorly trained or plain exhausted. Rebell led the coalition Campaign for Fiscal Equity and brought its successful lawsuit against the state, finally securing for New York City billions of dollars more in state aid starting last year. In the meantime, a whole generation of students came and went.

Rebell has taken the campaign national, with the support of Teachers College at Columbia University. On The Campaign for Educational Equity's Web site - www.tcequity.org - Rebell states his belief that while there is a renewed national commitment to higher academic standards, there is a catch: ". . . Although politicians and the public agree that we should eliminate the achievement gap, too few of them believe that we really can do it. The result is that while we are holding young students to ever higher standards of achievement, we are not creating an environment or providing the kind of resources that will enable them to reach those targets.''

Today's stories about "Our Schools. Our Money'' make plain that educational inequities persist in the school districts of the Lower Hudson Valley. Our communities should not lose sight of the fact that there aren't supposed to be any.